Post by @SecondUniverse@autistics.life

2026-08-08 08:42 UTC

Are we doing pronouns wrong? Telling someone your preferred pronouns and having that respected can be validating, but it also gives away a little power. It's giving the gender Nazis an easy way to be mean. What about modifying the first person pronoun? As a nonbinary person I am quite happy "I" is not gendered, but if you want to assert your gender, maybe using "Im/Ir/Ix" (or whatever) might be more useful. Instead of a once-and-done pronoun intro, you use the first person pronoun almost every other sentence. You are not depending on other people to adopt language. Secondly, in addition to wildly gendering "I", why not normalize they/them for everyone. This takes away the linguistic platform for misgendering microagressions. For me, gender has always been unwelcome and problematic. My apologies if I have not captured the nuances of pronoun usage from other perspectives. It is certainly not my intention to cause offence or invalidate any identity. #trans #gender #nonbinary #linguistics

Replies (2)

@Bamurubi@mastodon.social 2026-08-08 08:56

@SecondUniverse@autistics.life I like your second idea better than your first. So many things are unecessarily gendered already without adding to it. I lived in a community that spoke a language with no gender (so one word for he, she, it, him her, his, its). How refreshing that was! I also realised how in English we always ask the gender of a baby so we know how to refer to it, making gender a big deal right from day one of life outside the womb.😞 #gender #language

Open ##4447309
@petherfile@beige.party 2026-08-08 09:11

@SecondUniverse@autistics.life The Thai language works more or less the way you describe: "I" can be gendered while they/he/she isnt. Biggest difference is Thai has a polite word that goes at the end of the sentence that is gendered. The polite word is the most common way of inferring your own gender. You have to work a bit if you want to infer someone else's gender, it's not something you are going to do by accident. It clearly demonstrates that language can work that way.

Open ##5051595